Re: Discussion with Pine developers & Debian Issues

[Syrus Nemat-Nasser <syrus@ucsd.edu>]

On Tue, 6 Apr 1999, Terry Gray wrote:

[snip]
> One difference between sharing patch files vs. redistributing the
> resulting binaries is that the ultimate user or site administrator will
> tend to be more conscious of what is "standard Pine" vs. "modified Pine"
> if they go through the process of applying patches themselves.  Perhaps
> the more fundamental point is that without the requirement to get
> permission before redistributing modified binaries, UW essentially gives
> up all claim of change control.  I take your question to imply that our
> position would be more "consistent" if we required everyone under all
> circumstances to ask permission before they could modify Pine in any way,
> but that isn't where we wanted to be on the change control continuum.  
> Again, we want to enable end-users and site administrators to make changes
> necessary for their environment without any hassle about permissions...
> while at the same time retaining some modicum of change control over Pine
> as it flows throughout cyberspace.  (Some people consider this desire to
> be unreasonable; we do not.)

You are, of course, free to do this. However, because of this policy, I
have suggested that our local users switch to mutt, which is a suitable
alternative that does not require our administrators to recompile every
update themselves. It is your choice as to whether you want Debian to
ship your program. I would suggest that you release a version that
complies with the DFSG, but I am confident that "free" alternatives such
as mutt will prove to be satisfactory in either case.

Thanks. Syrus.

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Syrus Nemat-Nasser <syrus@ucsd.edu>    UCSD Physics Dept.